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@docrussjackson
Feb 2, 2022 • 18 tweets • 7 min read • Read on X
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The long-awaited "levelling up" strategy is a joke: the Government are openly taking the piss out of the "red wall" voters they conned into voting for them in 2019: it contains fuck-all new money, is driven largely by meaningless targets, & aims for a 2030 completion!
It's like it was written on the back of a fag packet during a lockdown party. At the heart of the strategy is a plan to create more regional mayors which nobody wants!

We want decent jobs, affordable homes & functional public services - which have all but disappeared since 2008!
The largely meaningless targets hope to "level up" some areas by 2030! What a joke. What an insult. By November last year, the Govt had committed just £11billion through policies to support the regeneration of towns & communities across the UK for the period from 2020/1 - 2025-6.
Where 'levelling up' has worked IN REALITY rather than in fantasy eg in post-unification Germany, there have been MASSIVE fiscal transfers from rich regions to poor ones - approaching £1.5 TRILLION, or £70BILLION *PER YEAR*!

The Tories are offering peanuts, targets, & bullshit.
The Tories have "spaffed up the wall' almost as much on unusable & overpriced PPE - £10 BILLION - as they've allocated for levelling up!

£10 BILLION has now been written off by the useless Tory government, & auditors have rebuked the Dept of Health for pissing away voters' cash!
I think most people now understand that millions of voters have suffered decades of rising inequality & rising cost of living, decades of declining pay & working conditions, declining public services, a decline in decent affordable housing, & a serious decline in quality of life.
And I think most people now understand why after decades of the ALREADY rich getting MUCH richer, & after being ignored & treated with near contempt by successive Governments, millions of decent people wanted to give an arrogant, out of touch & cruel establishment a bloody nose.
I also think that almost everyone now realises that despite his unpopularity with many voters, & despite his many faults, a Corbyn-led Govt would NOT have ignored rising poverty & inequality, would NOT have stoked a divisive culture war, & would NOT have let 180,000 people die.
Levelling up is a con. The transfer of wealth is not from rich individuals or regions to poorer ones, but from poor to rich.

We've lived through the biggest scams in British history: first the bank bailouts, then the Brexit lies, & now COVID opportunism.

While the Tories have cut the spending power of councils in Britain's most deprived areas by 40% since 2010, I'm afraid this utter mess has been forty long years in the making.

👏Every.👏Single.👏Time.👏
"Everyone, including the Secretary of State (Mr Gove) thinks it's shit."
Some of the wealthiest parts of England, including areas represented by government ministers, have so far been allocated 10 TIMES MORE MONEY per capita than the poorest under Boris Johnson’s “levelling up” agenda.

theguardian.com/inequality/202…
No fewer than eight of the “12 missions” at the heart of the government’s misleading & purely rhetorical "levelling up" strategy have been rehashed from a 2017 Industrial Strategy introduced by Theresa May, which was shelved by Boris Johnson.

independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
Leopards rarely change their spots #1.
Leopards rarely change their spots #2.
The National Audit Office says just 8% of the Govt’s major projects are properly evaluated, & 64% are not evaluated at all!

The Levelling up Dept 'has wasted opportunities’ to learn where spending could have biggest impact - £BILLIONS could be wasted.

civilserviceworld.com/professions/ar…
The NAO head Gareth Davies warned in a piece for The Times earlier this month that the government is “not learning from its successes or failures” because departments DO NOT FACE SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES for failing to evaluate their own work.

Sounds familiar...🤔

#SueGrayReport

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More from @docrussjackson

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Sep 13
🧵

OK, I'll bite.

The word Fascism isn't 'meaningless'.

To spell out why, we need to unpack both the underlying implication of Andrew Doyle's argument and the reasons why it fails to adequately account for contemporary political dangers. Image
Andrew Doyle asserts that the term "fascism" is misused to the point of recklessness, echoing George Orwell’s 1944 observation that the word had been rendered meaningless. Doyle’s concern is not uncommon—but imho, it’s ultimately misplaced, especially in today’s context.
While it’s true that “fascism” is sometimes deployed rhetorically or hyperbolically (eg by Trump), Doyle’s framing dangerously downplays the genuine resurgence of fascist-adjacent movements across the Western world and undermines the analytical clarity necessary to confront them. Image
Read 23 tweets
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Sep 8
🧵

Boris Johnson appears to have had a secret meeting with billionaire Peter Thiel - perhaps the most fanatical of the libertarian Oligarchs and co-founder of the controversial US data firm Palantir, the year before it was given a role at the heart of the UK’s pandemic response. Image
A month after entering No 10, Johnson and his senior adviser Dominic Cummings had a meeting with Thiel, leaked files suggest.

Johnson is now likely to face questions about whether the non-disclosure amounts to a breach of the ministerial code.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/s…
The hour-long afternoon meeting on 28 August 2019 was marked “private” in a log of Johnson’s activities that day and was not subsequently disclosed on the government’s public log of meetings.

Read 12 tweets
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Aug 31
🧵

Elon Musk has been amplifying far-right accounts again, including Tommy Robinson, Rupert Lowe, and numerous anonynmous known #disinformation superspreader accounts like 'End Wokeness'.

Let's examine the context for yesterday's march in Richard Tice's constituency, #Skegness. Image
After decades of neglect, Skegness (pop 20K), stands out on key socio-economic markers on national averages: residents are older; whiter; lower full-time employment; higher rates of few/no qualifications; and concentrated deprivation - it's far-more deprived than most of England. Image
History repeatedly teaches us that burdening already struggling communities is a recipe for disaster.

These communities have been crying out for help for DECADES, but successive UK Govts have largely ignored their pleas, and continued to increase inequality, which harms us all. Image
Read 60 tweets
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Aug 28
🧵 @Rylan Asylum seekers coming here aren’t technically "illegal." International law (the 1951 Refugee Convention) allows people to seek asylum in any country regardless of how they arrive or how many countries they pass through, as long as they're fleeing persecution or danger.
Allow me to explain why asylum seekers aren’t “illegal”, and how misinformation and nasty demonising and scapegoating rhetoric by certain politicians and media, including news media, has made some British people less welcoming of asylum seeekers.

@Rylan
People fleeing war, torture, or persecution have the legal right to seek asylum.

The 1951 Refugee Convention, which the UK helped write, says anyone escaping danger can apply for asylum in another country no matter how they arrive: claiming asylum isn't a crime.

@Rylan
Read 23 tweets
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Aug 27
Farage's illiberal, immoral, & unworkable authoritarian plan involves ripping up human rights laws forged after WWII, which protect British people, & wasting £billions of UK taxpayers' money, giving some of it to corrupt misogynistic totalitarian regimes.
theguardian.com/politics/2025/…Image
Image
Leaving the #ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act and disapplying international conventions

The UK would be an outlier among European democracies, in the company of only Russia and Belarus, if it were to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Opting out of treaties such as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against torture and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention would also be likely to do serious harm to the UK’s international reputation.

It could also undermine current return deals, including with France, and other cooperation agreements on people-smuggling with European nations such as Germany.

The Society of Labour Lawyers said the plan would “in all likelihood preclude further cooperation and law enforcement in dealing with small boats coming from the continent and so increase, rather than reduce, the numbers reaching our shores”. 

Farage said he would legislate to remove the “Hardial Singh” safeguards – a reference to a legal precedent that sets limits on the Home Office’s immigration detention powers – to allow indefinite detention for immigration purposes. This would be highly vulnerable to legal challenge.

Many of the rights protected by the ECHR and the Human Rights Act are rooted in British case law, so judges would still be able to prevent deportations, even without international conventions.

x.com/docrussjackson…
Reform UK’s grotesque far-right mass deportation plan is not just economically and socially illiterate (Britain an ageing population and low birth rate) rely on striking “returns agreements” with countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea and Sudan, offering financial incentives to secure these deals, alongside visa restrictions and potential sanctions on countries that refuse.

These are countries where the Home Office’s risk reports warn of widespread torture and persecution.

It would risk the scenario of making payments to countries such as Iran, whose regime the UK government has accused of plotting terror attacks on British soil.

The Liberal Democrats called the payments “a Taliban tax”, saying the plan would entail sending billions “to an oppressive regime that British soldiers fought and died to defeat”. They said: “Not a penny of taxpayers’ money should go to a group so closely linked to terrorist organisations proscribed by the UK.”
Read 13 tweets
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Aug 25
🧵

The internet never forgets.

A thread of tweets posted by Lucy Connolly.

A reminder of the one, viewed 310,000 times, for which she was jailed, which urged people to burn down asylum seeker hotels after the #Southport attack - which had nothing to do with asylum seekers. Image
While all these tweets of Connolly's were made before her incendiary post, they don't say which year they were posted.

They can be accessed here, via The Wayback Machine, which has archived more than 916 billion web pages.

Draw your own conclusions.

web.archive.org/web/2024080616…
Connolly's tweet (top right) was in response to the tweet on the left, which criticised Laurence Fox for posting an upskirt photograph of Narinder Kaur.

The next one (right centre) was Connolly asking Kaur if she had 'flashed her gash'.

The third discusses a teenage experience. Image
Read 16 tweets

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